#linguistics shitpost

[existennialmemes]

"That isn't a word!" Clearly it is, because I have used it as one. "You can't use/spell that word like that!" Clearly I can, because I have done so

"You can't—"

Listen to me, language is fluid, malleable, it exists not just to be used by us, but to be shaped by us. It is a tool to convey thoughts, the only thing that matters is if the thought was effectively conveyed. Not how technically accurate the usage was when compared to an arbitrary and equally made up standard.

So the next time you feel the urge to correct how someone uses language: Don't

Because you understood them, which means they used it correctly. Even if it wasn't correct before, it is now. The sheer Co-Creative act of Communicating and Comprehending brought it to life. You did that. You drew the intended meaning from those words and in doing so cemented their validity into the zeitgeist.

#language memes #linguistics #linguistics shitpost #linguistic prescriptivists are welcome to die mad

[tower-of-hana]

Call her ʔ the way she's in my throat

#linguistics #languages #linguistic #shitpost #linguist shitpost #linguistics shitpost #linguistics memes #lingblr

[santumerino]

A System of a Down linguistics parody song called "Rhoticity"

#lingblr #langblr #linguistics #linguistics shitpost #is this anything

[catgirl-soup]

hey how come we call the days of the week “monday, tuesday, wednesday, etc”, but then we don’t call the nights “monnight, tuesnight, wednesnight, etc”

i wanna wish people a happy thursnight

#thursnight #shitposting #humor #funny #r/196 #196 #rule #txt #thoughts #my stupid thoughts #days of the week #improving the english language #linguistics humor #linguistics shitpost #new words

[cant-think-of-a-good-one]

its 2059 and linguists discover a new important part of a language's grammar

grammatical vibe

#post drafted in may 27th #linguistics #grammar #linguistics shitpost

[noahtyouraverageenby]

The wug is my blorbo from linguistics <3

#ling major things #linguistics shitpost

[coherentselfscoots]

It's the 1990s, you are not wearing a wristwatch, and someone asks you for the time. You look down at your arm and say, sarcastically:

(English)

"It's time to buy a watch!" "It's two hairs/moles past a freckle." "A freckle past a hair." "Half past the freckle, according to the hair." "Oh goodness, look at my wrist. I gotta go!"

(Spanish)

"Son las carne y hueso." It's flesh and bone [o'clock].

(German)

"Es ist Haut vor Knochen." It's skin before bone.

(Danish)

"Klokken er fem minutter i bar arm." The time is five minutes to bare arm.

(Polish)

"[Która godzina?] Wpół do komina. Komin otwarty jest wpół do czwartej." Nursery rhyme: [What time is it?] Half till chimney. The chimney is open, it's half till four.

(Hungarian)

"Szőr óra bőr perc [csont másodperc]." Hair hours, skin minutes, [bone seconds].

#linguistics shitpost #jokes #lost in translation #give me more #i need this in every language #pre-smartphone humor #ohh what about “it's ten till tattoo”

[sewi-li-suwi]

*laughing uncontrollably*

C[+alveolar] > ɾ / V_V

#i'm p sure this is realistic #linguistics shitpost #GA: {t d} > ɾ / V_V #latin: s > r / V_V #me occasionally misspeaking: {n l} > ɾ / V_V #linguistics

[leseigneurdufeu]

Are you more stressed UwU )):

or more

#linguistics #linguistics shitpost

[aurorans-solis]

Language Maths???

Right so here's a first post I guess. A while back when I started learning German I noticed that you could make a 4x4 matrix out of the definite articles:

┌──────┬─────┬──────┬──────┐ │ masc │ fem │ neut │ plur │ ┌─────┼──────┼─────┼──────┼──────┤ │ nom │ der │ die │ das │ die │ ├─────┼──────┼─────┼──────┼──────┤ │ acc │ den │ die │ das │ die │ ├─────┼──────┼─────┼──────┼──────┤ │ dat │ dem │ der │ dem │ den │ ├─────┼──────┼─────┼──────┼──────┤ │ gen │ des │ der │ des │ der │ └─────┴──────┴─────┴──────┴──────┘

Naturally the obvious thing to do was treat it as such and find things about it like the inverse, Gram-Schmidt QR decomposition, and of course most fittingly the eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

Attempting this leaves a bit of ambiguity: do we treat the words as sums or products of letters, or maybe even variables in and of themselves? Not wanting to answer this myself (read: I couldn't decide lmao) I ended up just doing all three:

And the results?

Absolutely perfe-

Hold on. I need to zoom out a bit for the sums matrix inverse. Let's just zoom out as far as wxMaxima will let me.

Okay, time to export to HTML and view the webpage.

Cool. Now what about QR decomp? Turns out exporting to HTML just dies and then equations aren't rendered. I have to export to TeX and render that to a PDF. Also I have to edit the PDF to be uh... 10000cm wide. Yes, that's right, 100m wide. 328ft. And let's have a look at our beautiful German definite article QR decompositions:

So at regular font size in TeX (12pt I believe?) that means that the Q and R for the sums matrix (page 1) and R for the variables matrix (page 3) are >100m wide. Both Q and R for the products matrix are a measly 19m wide or so.

That was fun! Let's do the eigenvalues and eigenvectors next! Or so I thought. I gave all three 16GB of heap space and calculating the eigenvectors for every single one of them ran out of memory (taking OVER A WEEK to do so for the variables matrix). So, for the time being, the world does not know what the German definite article eigenvalues and eigenvectors are. A truly pitiable result.

#german #linguistics shitpost #maths bullshit

[whales-are-gay]

#shitpost #my art #linguistics #sociolinguistics #1k #2k #5k #10k #20k

[existennialmemes]

English Language: I don't need accent marks.

Everyone else: Oh, cool. So your letters will only have one possible pronunciation each?

English Language: No.

Everyone Else: Uhh, but the rules that determine how they're pronounced are clear and consistent, right?

English Language: Also no.

#shitpost #shitposting #linguistics shitpost #linguistics #seriously though English is the worst #English is a chimera of at least 5 different languages that all use accent marks #what the hell happened to our accent marks

[foone]

Annoying linguistics by going around asking people if they have the X-Y merger but X and Y are unambiguous homophones.

"oh, does your dialect have the coarse/course merger? Interesting!" *writes something down*

"Oh I didn't realize your dialect has the pair/pear merger, that's neat."

#linguistics shitposting

[santumerino]

she, them, itself, who ← pronouns (pro-, meaning "substituting for", nouns)

suitcase, chart, spreadsheet ← pro nouns (professional nouns)

linguistics

#linguistics #lingblr #langblr #pronouns #linguistics shitpost #is this anything

[hecho-a-mano]

a german woman who's a scammer call her a fräudlein

#german language #german #linguistics #shitpost #joke #funny #germany #pun #queue are lovely #language #languages #duolingo #langblr #jokrd #jokes

[sachermorte]

so the thing about english is that people think it's so divorced from other germanic languages based on like. words. I've even heard people try to insist that english is a romance language. because of that whole messy business in 1066 with out-of-wedlock willy and his band of naughty normans. and now a good chunk of the vocabulary is french or whatever and they're prestigious so not using them makes you sound like a rube and this and that and the other

and yes william the conqueror will never be safe from me. I will have my revenge on him. he fucked up a perfectly good germanic language is what he did. this will be me in hell

but the thing is that most words in, say, german do have a one to one english equivalent. not all hope is lost, for those who still dare to see it. it's just that you 1066pilled normancels aren't looking in the right place

dog (en) ≠ der Hund (de) but der Hund (de) -> hound (en)

look with your special eyes. that one was easier. not all of them are this intuitive because of semantic narrowing and broadening and waltzing and hokey-pokeying and whatever else. I'll give you a few more

animal (en) ≠ das Tier (de)

aha! you think. I've got him on the ropes now.

but then

das Tier (de) -> deer (en)

nooooo!! you whine and cry in gay baby jail. the consonants are different!!! listen to me. listen, I say, putting both my hands on your shoulder. /t/and /d/ are the same sound. you just put your voice behind one of them.

nooooooooo!! you wail. deer are animals but not all animals are deer!!! listen to me. LISTEN. they used to be. animals used to be deer. that's just what we called them. it was a long time ago. it was a weird time in all our lives. it's okay.

let's try for a verb this time

to die (en) ≠ sterben (de) but sterben (de) -> to starve

same principle with the consonants, we're just changing a stop (where we completely stop the airflow and then let it through) for a fricative (where we still let some air go through. idk where it's going. maybe to its job or something.)

to starve used to mean generally to die, not just to die of malnourishment. we do that a lot. we take one word for a lot of things and make it mean one thing. or take one word for one thing and make it mean a lot of things. this is common and normal.

"okay but roland," you say, suddenly coming up with an argument. "what about tree? trees are super common. I don't think we'd fuck around too much with that. the german word is baum! what about THAT?"

"when did you learn german?" I ask, but then decide it isn't relevant right at this very moment. but fine.

tree (en) ≠ der Baum (de) but der Baum (de) -> beam (en)

beam??? you ask incredulously. beam???? BEAM?????? you continue with the same tone and cadence of captain holt from brooklyn 99.

yes. beam. like the evil beams from my eye I'm going to hit you with if you don't stop shouting.

but the vowels!!! you howl.

listen. listen to me. the vowels mean nothing. absolutely nothing. they're fluid like water. it got raised in english.

"WHAT DOES RAISED MEAN"

it doesn't matter right now. they were raised better than you, at least. stop shouting. open your eyes and see what god has given you. they're the same word.

"they're NOT the same word. they mean different things!"

we've been over this. they didn't used to. a beam was (and is) a long solid piece of wood. much like the long solid piece of wood I showed your mother last night.

FAQ:

Q: could english be some kind of germanic-romance hybrid?

A: do you become a sexy thing from the black lagoon just because you dressed up as one for halloween? english may have gotten a lot of vocabulary from norman french, but its history and syntax are distinctly germanic. that's what we base these things on.

Q: okay but what does it matter? this doesn't actually affect my day to day life

A: you come into my house? you come into my house, the house of an autistic man living in vienna austria and studying english linguistics and you ask me what does it matter? sit back down. I was going to let you go but now I have powerpoints to show you

Q: you're stupid and wrong and gay and a bad person

A: I know it's you, Willy

#I don't know what came over me #it was the devil #linguistics #english linguistics #etymology #shitpost nach sacher art